Mankind is in the brink of extinction. Scientist have found an habitable planet that is located far, far away. Too far to reach by living humans. A spaceship carrying the dna of the last men and women has been sent on a mission to habit a new world. A ship is operated by an highly advanced artificially intelligent being.
graphics were great, and the mood was excellent. tough questions. the voice audio was very low during gameplay, and I couldn't hear a couple of the endings at all. :-( that might be bugfix worthy. overall, I thought this was an awesome jam submission.
Really interesting game, determining the fate of the mankind with simple choices.
I don't think the choices really affected the ending in significant enough ways though. I played through this 4 times with lots of different choices but got just 2 endings. For some reason the game really likes to focus on the animal sacrifice question over everything else, making it much bigger deal than say, is religion or science important.
...and now webplayer build 03 fixes the "there's no green nor red buttons" issue which sort of helps playing :D (thx again Dave for pointing this out)
AdventureIslands -- I sent you a twitter msg about choices, but I believe what you listed in your comment is untrue! (and I tested the webplayer, I hope there's no bug in saving your answers from one scene to another... which platform are you using? :))
Great mood.. wish the game would have done more with it's enviroment as I already could do more than pushing buttons and i and would have prefered text over voice acting. But very clever and wellmade anyway.
This was interesting. Got 3 different endings... The feel to the game was really great. A downside would be the lack of subtitles. The voice recording was clear and understandable enough, but I still feel that since it played an important part in the game, it had to have subs.
Had a lot of troubles clicking the buttons, like the picking algorithm was off or something - at first I thought the red button wasn't clickable and I thought that was the "you only get one" part of the game. Later I was able to click it by clicking near it, so I answered 'yes' to some things I wouldn't have. Not sure if that ruined my experience or not.
But all in all, neato, the American judge gives it an 8.9
I heard some folks had trouble pushing the in-game buttons. There's secret keys: Y and N will answer Yes and No respectively. I think that breaks some of the immersion though :D
Subtitles: I would have added those if only I had time to create a proper timing system. It really was crucial to have voices acting, since textual style just doesn't have the same feel in it.
If this gets developed further, I will add subtitles everywhere. One additional thing that was also missing (due lack of time) was a dynamic "old man talks" endings... but just didn't have time for those.
Also, I had written like 3 times more endings with variations... but you know... not all can get it :)
@Kohijin: I had some thoughts about adding more things to interact with but realized that this simply would not be possible to do within the time I had.
Thanks everybody for testing! Your feedback is sooo much appreciated.
If you have any comments on what else could be improved and what you liked most, that would be awesome to hear.
I really like the idea of this game. Moral decisions in gaming are one of my most favourite mechanics. However, I feel like the ending was pretty much just reading my answers back to me, and not really extrapolating them into consequences. Also I felt I had to spend almost all of my energy trying to understand what the audio was saying and even then I missed some of it, which took away a lot of the mood for me. Despite all that this was a really cool entry and some of the questions struck that thought-provoking string I was hoping for when I loaded this game up. This would be cool to see expanded upon. Good job! Looking forward to see what you come up with next time :)
Haha! I always like moral choices and it is educational how you implemented them - like everybody can relate to the big themes, only .. it is too obvious what you expect the player to answer, the moral highground being the PC, educated, egalitarian, atheistic vegetarian which is the ideal of our time. But that leaves half the world (U.S.) outside of the scope, because they have .. other morals. And that's the problem with morality - it is politics, unless you are dead sure that you are right. But this would lead to war. Anyway, i didn't mind ;)
And i would even have explored your open-mindedness via the subtleties of the endings more .. if i would have been able to hear/understand them.. Nice setting too!
Wow, that felt like such a deep and profound experience - I really had to stop and think about some of the answers and I would be deeply intrigued buy some stats of what others put (perhaps you dump stats if you select "privacy is more important than security" hehe ;) I have to say - I got exactly the ending I was hoping from from my choice of answers and that was really rewarding in itself! I feel uplifted from this! Hugely atmospheric, wonderful presentation and a huge amount of thoughtfulness in this entry. I suppose I'd have liked to have seen some fireworks for the ending to make more use of the 3d chamber you have so carefully crafted, but the two phase approach works really nicely. Contemplative!
I get where you wanted to go, but there isn't enough feedback to the answered questions in the end. A few sentences about the status quo with a camera focusing the earth isn't very satisfying for the player. The main idea is pretty cool and ambitious, I just wished for more consequences or maybe some more visual feedback. Just my 2 cents ;)
@The Evil Cult: Thanks for the comments, most appreciated! Yes, I had written several other possible endings but time just didn't permit... and I had to stick with generic "read back" style. I do have plans for extrapolating them into more consequences!
And yeh... audio... Mic... humming noise... cutting "noise" away cut also other stuff -- and I'm no native English speaking citizen, so yeh. I wanted to add subtitles but had no time. I have plans to expand this game!
@postmodestie: Thank you! I actually started with one system and there were left some ideas that unfortunately did not get into the game. And yeh, sorry about the voice quality!
@jimmypaulin: that's a nice idea. I too would like to know what are the stats -- especially for the FIRST RUN. :) Thanks. And yeh, there was supposed to be bit more fancy ending... but I repeat what I say: no time. .. :)
@capnramses: It is very important for the mood. If it had been 2d, I doubt it could have achieved the same mood. Plus... I had some plans which did not make their way (just yet).
@Jacques_le_lezard: I agree about "not much to play"... although I believe it is a game in the sense that it has meaningful choices (and yes, also some non-meaningful) and a win condition (so to speak). Your comment was very important to me. Thanks for taking time to play it.
Wow, some questions made me think a moment. Especially the last one ;) The mood was quite nice. One thing that would have been really great, would be some visuals for the endings. The voiceacting is great, but some graphics would have made it even more awesome. All in all great work! Keep it on :)
Great to see games like that in LD. Also very ambitious to do your own voice overs. About that, some tips (despite getting a better microphone):
- Try to do softer fades and check if any distinct background noises can be heard at the start/end of the voice sample. I heard your "Stop" mouse click once. - Most importantly: Add an ambiance track, e.g. some soft buzzing/noise from the room, or some ambient music. It will help to hide the noises in your voice recordings, especially if you do longer fade in/outs.
Comments35
To my defence, it was after midnight... about 02:27 when I initiated the uploading.
NOW it should work.
Thanks Dave a lot!
I don't think the choices really affected the ending in significant enough ways though. I played through this 4 times with lots of different choices but got just 2 endings. For some reason the game really likes to focus on the animal sacrifice question over everything else, making it much bigger deal than say, is religion or science important.
AdventureIslands -- I sent you a twitter msg about choices, but I believe what you listed in your comment is untrue! (and I tested the webplayer, I hope there's no bug in saving your answers from one scene to another... which platform are you using? :))
lacks the subtitles in the end
The feel to the game was really great.
A downside would be the lack of subtitles. The voice recording was clear and understandable enough, but I still feel that since it played an important part in the game, it had to have subs.
But all in all, neato, the American judge gives it an 8.9
I heard some folks had trouble pushing the in-game buttons. There's secret keys: Y and N will answer Yes and No respectively. I think that breaks some of the immersion though :D
Subtitles: I would have added those if only I had time to create a proper timing system. It really was crucial to have voices acting, since textual style just doesn't have the same feel in it.
If this gets developed further, I will add subtitles everywhere. One additional thing that was also missing (due lack of time) was a dynamic "old man talks" endings... but just didn't have time for those.
Also, I had written like 3 times more endings with variations... but you know... not all can get it :)
@Kohijin: I had some thoughts about adding more things to interact with but realized that this simply would not be possible to do within the time I had.
Thanks everybody for testing! Your feedback is sooo much appreciated.
If you have any comments on what else could be improved and what you liked most, that would be awesome to hear.
But that leaves half the world (U.S.) outside of the scope, because they have .. other morals. And that's the problem with morality - it is politics, unless you are dead sure that you are right. But this would lead to war. Anyway, i didn't mind ;)
And i would even have explored your open-mindedness via the subtleties of the endings more .. if i would have been able to hear/understand them..
Nice setting too!
Yes : Good mood, but there is not enough gameplay.
No : Good job that's a nice experiment.
Just my 2 cents ;)
And yeh... audio... Mic... humming noise... cutting "noise" away cut also other stuff -- and I'm no native English speaking citizen, so yeh. I wanted to add subtitles but had no time. I have plans to expand this game!
@postmodestie: Thank you! I actually started with one system and there were left some ideas that unfortunately did not get into the game. And yeh, sorry about the voice quality!
@jimmypaulin: that's a nice idea. I too would like to know what are the stats -- especially for the FIRST RUN. :) Thanks. And yeh, there was supposed to be bit more fancy ending... but I repeat what I say: no time. .. :)
@capnramses: It is very important for the mood. If it had been 2d, I doubt it could have achieved the same mood. Plus... I had some plans which did not make their way (just yet).
@Mago & Lacutis: thanks for testing!
@Jacques_le_lezard: I agree about "not much to play"... although I believe it is a game in the sense that it has meaningful choices (and yes, also some non-meaningful) and a win condition (so to speak). Your comment was very important to me. Thanks for taking time to play it.
@dudsen: thank you! Very useful feedback.
@triplefox: glad you liked it! I can confirm that everybody else has been saying the same about the audio :D
The mood was quite nice. One thing that would have been really great, would be some visuals for the endings. The voiceacting is great, but some graphics would have made it even more awesome.
All in all great work! Keep it on :)
- Try to do softer fades and check if any distinct background noises can be heard at the start/end of the voice sample. I heard your "Stop" mouse click once.
- Most importantly: Add an ambiance track, e.g. some soft buzzing/noise from the room, or some ambient music. It will help to hide the noises in your voice recordings, especially if you do longer fade in/outs.